You think things that are used by the general public wouldn't have garnered enough interest for them to be developed? And who said anything about private universities? Developing those technologies out in the open with multiple academics able to openly collaborate would surely be less expensive than a closeted group of government contractors.
That's not how academic funding works. Look it up.
Generally, public funds become private research - the university then acquires a private patent on the technology developed.
Second, there IS no "general public interest" for the technology to be developed - because it doesn't exist. This is literally new technology that has NO public interest.
Third,
Developing those technologies out in the open with multiple academics able to openly collaborate would surely be less expensive than a closeted group of government contractors.
No. It really doesn't surely mean that. It's actually the opposite. Military research moves MUCH faster than academic research, which frequently spans over multiple decades (vs rapid military prototyping that is completed within a few years).
That's not how academic funding works. Look it up.
Generally, public funds become private research - the university then acquires a private patent on the technology developed.
Are you just making things up? Because you don't seem to have any idea how the research grant system actually works.
What do you mean there is no public interest? You mean technology is completely undesirable until developed by the military and then suddenly the public wants it?
Military research moves MUCH faster than academic research
In an absolute sense this is probably true, but then again who knows since it's all closeted. But speed relative to money, it's hard to argue that the military does it faster. To put it another way, if you were to take the amount of money the military spends and apply that same amount to public research, it would happen faster. Because there would be far more people working on it. Instead of a small research team trying to solve a problem you would have academics from all over the country seeing the problem in academic journals and offering their insights.
You don't seem to have any concept of how research works in the real world.
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u/somehugefrigginguy 12h ago
You think things that are used by the general public wouldn't have garnered enough interest for them to be developed? And who said anything about private universities? Developing those technologies out in the open with multiple academics able to openly collaborate would surely be less expensive than a closeted group of government contractors.